06/29/2008 - Results of the MARC Advisory Committee discussion - Deferred. The committee did not consider this a necessary change for the initial implementation of RDA. It may be discussed in a future meeting when there is more clarity about FRBR entities and further direction from the Joint Steering Committee for the Development of RDA.

Proposal No. 2008-05/2: Identifying work and expression records

1. BACKGROUND

In 2005, MARBI considered a report,
Using MARC 21 with FRBR: Record Configurations.
One of the objectives of this paper was to clarify the difference
between internal record configurations and exchange records.
A key point articulated in the report was that while there
are numerous ways that a record can be configured internally
within a system, an exchange record should be fully understood
by itself and is not a dependent record or collection of records.

RDA was reorganized in October 2007 to attempt to better
facilitate using some specific relational database models
that also underlie the FRBR model. Proposal No. 2008-05/1
(Changes to the MARC 21 Formats to Encode Data using Resource
Description and Access (RDA): Introduction and Principles)
discusses these models and support for them in MARC.
The FRBR/RDA relational models require identifying the
level of the record in terms of FRBR Group 1 Entities, i.e.
work, expression, manifestation, item.

2. DISCUSSION

While there are currently numerous FRBR implementations that use
existing MARC 21 data to provide meaningful displays for users,
it is believed that explicit coding in bibliographic and authority
records to identify works and expressions will help to facilitate
more effective displays and support for user tasks.

2.1 FRBR Group 1 Entities

In FRBR terms, works and expressions are both abstract
entities of intellectual and artistic content. More
specifically, the entity referred to as work is defined
as a distinct intellectual or artistic creation of a work.
The entity defined as expression is the intellectual or
artistic realization of a work (through a mode of expression
such as language).

In FRBR terms, a manifestation is the physical embodiment
of an expression of a work. When a work is realized,
the resulting expression of a work may be physically
contained on or in a medium such as paper, video tape, etc.
In other words, a manifestation can be viewed as the
container for an expression of a work.

Works and Expressions as Authority records.

The name/title authority records and title authority records
which we create today represent the FRBR entities defined
as works and expressions.

Manifestations as Bibliographic records.

The bibliographic records that we create today are
typically describing manifestations. We use name/uniform
title and uniform title access points in these bibliographic
manifestation records to identify works and expressions
and to collocate resources -- they refer to work and
expression data that is carried, however, in the appropriate
work and expression records. In an internal system the
work or expression references may be only through pointers,
a concept that has been used in some internal systems
for many years, but in the communications record we
carry the data strings in support of simpler database
systems that are not relational in that way.
This referencing of the work and expression headings
in a manifestation record does not, however, turn the
manifestation record into a work record or an
expression record.

Works and Expressions as Bibliographic records.

The 2005 MARBI report Using MARC 21 with FRBR:
Record Configurations analyzed the fields in the MARC
authority and bibliographic formats that are needed for work
or expression records. No specific decisions were made about
which type of record would be used. The point made was that
while our tradition has been to make name/uniform title and
uniform title (i.e., work and expression records) as authority
records, they could have been made as bibliographic records.
If they were made as bibliographic records, that would not
change in any way the referencing of work or expression data
in the bibliographic manifestation record.

Manifestations that do not need independent Work or Expression records.

And finally we need to look at the Type 1 entities for the
80% mentioned in the OCLC study that are lone manifestations
and for which uniform titles are not needed. The study undertaken
by OCLC indicated that 78% of items in WorldCat consist of a
single manifestation. Here the manifestation record is
the expression record and is also the work record.
In such cases, fields 1XX/245 or field 245 of the bibliographic
record serve to identify the work, expression, and manifestation,
which are all the same. Again, while these records may be
split into any convenient configuration internally,
for the MARC communications record the data needs to be
together in a single record and information that enables
fragmentation in internal systems needs to be in the record.

It is proposed that new field 011 (Entity type) be defined
in the MARC 21 bibliographic and authority formats to identify
explicitly the work, expression, and manifestation level of the record.
Defining a field in both the authority and bibliographic format will
provide some flexibility for this information. The absence of field
011 in a bibliographic record is the default for a manifestation
record.

If an authority record is for a name/title or title, AND the
cataloging rules are RDA, then the authority would be expected to
carry a 011 indicating whether it is for a work or for an expression.
If the record is a name/title or title record but not RDA, then
the 011 work or expression information would be a useful
identifier of this type of record. If the record is not
for a name/title or title heading and the cataloging rules are
RDA, then it would be for another type of entity, e.g., a person.

3. PROPOSED CHANGES

In the MARC 21 formats for bibliographic and authority data, define field 011:

011 Work or expression record (NR)
This field identifies whether the record represents a work or an expression.

Indicators

First – Undefined

Second- Undefined

Subfields

$a – Entity type
Values: work, expression, manifestation

$2 - Source of type terms

4. EXAMPLES

In the following examples, 4.1 examples use the Authority format
for name/title and title headings; 4.2 examples use the Bibliographic
format for name/title and title records. Both use the Bibliographic
format for manifestation records. An agency should do one or
the other.

In 4.3, work and expression records are not needed so only a
bibliographic record is made.

4.1 Authority records for work and expression and
bibliographic records for manifestations.